A look back at the number of criminal cases filed in federal district courts over the last decade reveals that fluctuations are due to a multitude of factors, including law-enforcement policy shifts, legislation and court decisions.

According to data compiled by the Administrative Office Statistics Division, filings of trial court criminal cases rose 31 percent from 1990 to 2000. But with the increased criminal caseload throughout the decade, the number of judgeships has remained relatively unchanged, which means workload has increased substantially for each active judge. In 1990, the criminal cases per authorized judgeship stood at 84. The addition of 74 new district judgeships in 1991 temporarily decreased the criminal cases per authorized judgeship to 71. Three judgeships were lost between 1991 and 1999, primarily because some temporary judgeship authorizations expired during those years. Since 1994, cases per authorized judgeship have continued to rise in spite of the authorization of nine new judgeships in November 1999. By 2000, the number of criminal cases per authorized judgeship had grown to 96.

Where has the growth in criminal cases occurred? Since 1995, this growth has been due to large increases in drug and immigration filings, and in weapons and firearms filings.

Drug case filings rose 45 percent between 1990 and 2000 because of anti-drug efforts across the United States and along the southwestern border by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The DEA worked on the Southwest Border Initiative that focuses on controlling drugs and violence along the southwestern border of the United States, which the DEA considers a major point of entry for approximately 70 percent of all illicit drugs smuggled into the nation. Across the United States, the DEA supported the highway drug interdiction program carried out by state and local agencies in "high intensity drug trafficking areas" designated by the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Drug filings nationwide have also increased because of prosecutions under the Comprehensive Methamphetamine Control Act of 1996, which was enacted in response to the emergence of widespread use of this drug.

Filings of immigration cases surged 401 percent between 1990 to 2000. The explosive growth in immigration cases has occurred since 1994 primarily in the five districts along the southwestern border of the United States-California-Southern, Arizona, Texas-Southern, Texas-Western, and New Mexico-because of a strategy of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to reduce crime along the U.S. border by focusing on illegal immigration, alien smuggling, and drug trafficking.

Filings of weapons and firearms cases rose 94 percent between 1990 to 2000. The growth in filings before 1992 may be attributed to the DOJ's Anti-Violent Crime Initiative, which includes Operation Trigger-lock, a program that encourages U.S. attorneys to coordinate with state and local officials in prosecuting violent criminal and firearms offenders under federal statutes. The most recent surge in weapons and firearms filings occurred as U.S. attorneys in cities with the highest violent crime rates began implementing special federal programs patterned after Project Exile in Richmond, Virginia, and Operation Ceasefire in Boston, Massachusetts. In these programs, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies seek to prosecute felons possessing firearms under federal laws, which often carry more severe penalties than do state laws.

The rise in criminal filings has not been a continuous climb. Dips in criminal filings occurred in 1991, 1993, and 1994-and not always because crime was on the down swing.

Operation Desert Storm influenced the 1991 criminal case filings. With the military population severely reduced on state-side military bases during the war,there was a reduction in the number of misdemeanor drunk driving and traffic offenses. A DOJ hiring freeze affecting federal prosecutors as well as agents in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Customs Service, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service contributed in large part to the decline in criminal cases in 1993 and 1994. Criminal cases declined with fewer resources available to investigate and prosecute potential criminal activity.

A change in policy also caused a decline in the number of drug cases filed in the southwestern districts in 1991. Following significant increases in filings after the enactment of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, U.S. attorneys in the border districts turned from the prosecution of low level drug cases to focus on more complex multi-defendant drug cases.

Firearms filings declined in 1993, 1994, and 1996, in some part due to legislation and a Supreme Court decision. The decline in firearms cases in 1993 and 1994 followed the decline in all criminal cases but also was the reaction to a 103 percent growth in firearms filings between 1987 and 1992 after the enactment of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. The decline in weapons and firearms cases in 1996 was partly a result of the Supreme Court's ruling in Bailey v United States, which established that enhanced penalties for using a firearm during a drug trafficking offense or crime of violence could not be applied unless a defendant actually used a weapon-and did not merely possess it-while committing the crime.